


When One Door Closes, Another One Opens...Somewhere

by salamandererg



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Fictional Characterizations of Real People, Future Fic, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-09 10:34:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4345226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salamandererg/pseuds/salamandererg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Paul, reincarnated in the 31st century, use alien customs to court each other like emotionally repressed boys.  Cross-posted from livejournal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When One Door Closes, Another One Opens...Somewhere

“Your name is Paul? Kind of old-fashioned, isn’t it? What, were your parents born in the twenty-one hundreds or something?”

“No,” Paul sneered at the boy who had, apparently, made it his life mission to tease him about his name. “They’re just traditional. They liked the way it sounded.”

“Oh right, Paul. Paaaaaa-oooooooooool. Paaaaaaaaaaaul. Paullllllllllllllll—”

“Oh shut up, like Joret is such a grand-slam name too.”

“…better than Paul.”

“Humans!” Ucevzel held up her hands between her two friends as they stared each other down, “I did not introduce you to each other so you could argue popular carbon based life form nomenclature. I thought you could both benefit from meeting someone with the same hobbies and interests as you. I was not expecting a,” Ucevzel looked down, unsure of the phrasing of her next sentence, “metaphorical urinating match.”

She narrowed her three eyes at Joret, who had started the whole thing. He looked completely un-intimidated (he had been on the receiving end of many a glare from her) and began picking dirt from underneath his fingernails. Paul, however, looked a little bit sorry and tugged his ear in apology, as Ucevzel’s culture dictated, and she accepted it with an ear tug of her own.

The introductions did not go as well as Ucevzel had hoped, as Joret was incredibly rude and Paul was just as snotty. She was beginning to think she had made a mistake, until (by some wonderful twist of fate) the boys started talking about ‘planet molding’. 

Planet Molding: the act of taking a previously uninhabitable planet and terra-forming it to life sustaining levels; an engineering process that has been in practice since recreational intergalactic travel was made possible and an ever increasing global population made it a necessity to inhabit other planets.

Most global engineers were just concerned with getting the atmosphere to be human/life form friendly and did not place importance on the landscape, but others had elevated the design to an art form.

Ucevzel smiled as Joret and Paul talked about the correct altitude for the perfect mountain, where to place waterfalls and streams without being too gaudy, and if it was better to cast seeds into the wind and just let them grow wherever or to designate spots. They seemed to finally have something to say to each other without instigating a fight.

Of course, after Paul had left and Ucevzel asked Joret what he thought of him, Joret started complaining about the younger boy again. It seemed that even though they were getting along, Paul was doing something to upset Joret. Ucevzel sighed and rolled all of her eyes again, knowing that Joret was just…being stupid. Ucevzel was getting tired of it and finally turned to the human boy, who was still ranting.

“Joret, no matter what you say about him, just remember—though it is not usually a talent I like to brag about, I can still smell your pheromone levels and let me inform you that they became particularly high during the exact moment—”

Joret’s face turned red in mortification and he immediately stopped talking, glaring at Ucevzel’s smug face.

“Oh shut up! And keep your gorram nose out of my business! Literally!”

Joret stomped away, thinking about how he was going to get in touch with Paul without Ucevzel hearing about it.

\--

“Do you believe in soul mates?”

Joret asked absent-mindedly as he looked for the correct coordinates of the star quadrant he wanted to show Paul, who had forsaken the hundreds of seats around him and was lying on the floor looking up at the currently blank planetarium ceiling. Paul turned his head toward Joret’s voice, only able to see the front of the older boy’s face lit up by the small handheld computer he was typing on. The planetarium was pitch dark all around and Paul felt very calmed by it; it was nice to just lie there in the cold room, gazing up at nothing in particular.

“Soul mates, like, ‘two people that are meant for each other’?” Paul smiled a bit, “Or the Kreglorian definition of it? ‘A debilitating attachment to someone who is designated to rip your heart out and sacrifice it to the god Freg in a fertility incantation’.” Paul recited in his best instructor’s voice.

Joret stopped trying to remember what files he had found the coordinates in and turned toward Paul with a ‘what do you think?’ expression.

“The one without the heart-rippage.”

Paul put his hands behind his head and waited for Joret to hurry up programming the computer, “I guess so, yeah. It’s hard not to.”

A thousand stars swooped onto the ceiling, lighting up the room so both boys could now see each other. Paul’s mouth dropped open; he had never seen stars as bright as these before, the lights of the city where he lived always drowned them out, making most of them disappear and the few ones he could see were always pale and uninteresting to look at. These were absolutely beautiful, Paul was amazed at how clear they were, and these were only simulations! He was so transfixed that when he heard Joret’s voice coming from his right side he was a bit startled; he hadn’t even heard the older teen walk over to him.

“…it’s not so hard,” Joret mumbled out.

Stars forgotten (just for the moment), Paul turned all his attention to Joret. Joret’s eyes were busy mapping out the different constellations and thoroughly avoiding Paul’s questioning gaze. The older boy seemed to be seriously contemplative for once, his face was blank and his eyes were staring straight above him. Paul noticed that he could see the reflection of the light from the imitated stars in Joret’s eyes.

“You don’t believe in having a soul mate then?”

Joret shrugged, “I find it kind of difficult to believe that there is one person (or ‘life form’) out there for each of us. Seems a bit impossible.”

“Really?” Paul’s eyes became preoccupied with the galaxy simulation on the ceiling again, “With all the life forms that have been discovered in the past centuries, you really think not one of them would…‘complete you’?”

Joret looked toward Paul and studied his friend’s face with a smile, “I didn’t say that. I said it’s hard to believe there’s just one for each of us. It’s more likely that there’s at least two or three…or twenty.”

Paul laughed and shook his head, here he was getting serious, and to Joret (the one who had asked the question in the first place) it was just a big joke.

“You know, polygamy is still illegal on Earth.”

Joret waved his hand.

“Aw, pssh! You know they keep bobbling on that one. One year it is and the next it’s not. Besides, I’ll just get my intergalactic passport and move to one of the pro-polygamy planets. Settle myself down there quite nicely with my three human spouses and my two alien ones.”

“Five people? You think you need to marry five people to make you happy?”

Joret pretended to think, “Hm, no you’re right. I might need one more, you never know.”

Joret shot a suggestive look at Paul right after he spoke, but was disappointed that the young teen’s attention was not on him anymore. Instead, Paul was gazing up, his eyes drinking in the stars; it seemed he was unable to turn away for too long.

Joret began pointing out which stars were which and what planet has a mating ritual that lasts 35 Earth years and how on Erthia the proper way to court someone is to cut off their hand (“But it’s okay, ‘cause they grow back.”). Joret went through all the constellations he knew of (and made up some of the ones he didn’t) until their conversation faded away and Paul just stared up.

Joret had seen these stars plenty of times though and was now having more fun studying Paul’s openly amazed face. He was almost caught off-guard when Paul turned to him, he thought the younger boy was going to ask him why he was staring; but instead, Paul gave him an immense smile. Joret suddenly felt very accomplished and gave Paul a self-satisfied grin back; he made a sweeping gesture toward the star covered ceiling,

“There,” he said grandly, “now you’ve seen the stars.”

\--

“Did you know that in Ucevzel’s culture, eating a peach together is considered a marriage proposal?” Paul said after a while, looking sideways at his companion.

“Oh really?” Joret said with a fake interested tone in his voice and took a huge bite of the piece of peach he had just sliced.

The sun had set a while ago, but the lights from the city were so bright that it seemed only to be early evening. Joret and Paul sat dangerously close to the edge of the hotel roof owned by Paul’s father, seventy-three stories above the sidewalks, neon lights, restaurants, and busy, scurrying people. Paul couldn’t look over the edge for very long before he became dizzy and apprehensive, but Joret took all the time in the world peering down. It made the older boy feel powerful, like he could jump off and nothing would happen to him, he would just float to the ground and land softly on the pavement. Paul had to tap him on the shoulder more than once to snap him out of his reverie, but Joret just grinned at him.

The two boys sat up there for about an hour more, before Paul had to go down for his shift at the front desk (his father, being traditional, had opted not to have his hotel run solely by androids). They both swung around and put their feet back on the solid rooftop. Joret bent down to the tiny plate they had brought up and handed Paul the last slice of the peach with a smile. 

Paul took it with a tiny, knowing smirk on his face, and decided to tease Joret a bit.

“Something tells me you already knew full well about the peach thing when you asked me to eat one with you.”

Joret raised his eyebrow and refused to be one-upped, “Something tells me you knew exactly what you were doing when you said ‘yes’.”

Paul gave a little laugh and looked down, refusing to meet Joret’s eyes, thoroughly embarrassed at having been found out.

\--

Paul walked beside Joret, utterly confused at why he was up at this godforsaken hour. 

He had received a call at 3:30 that morning from the older boy, telling Paul to get dressed and meet him by Azalea Park’s North entrance in an hour. Joret had hung up before Paul could protest.

So, despite being half-asleep, Paul dragged himself out of bed, did the bare minimum of ‘getting ready’, and tip-toed out of his house to walk the half mile to the park.

Paul arrived at the gate mishap free and exactly on time, with no Joret in sight. Paul shivered in the morning air and rolled his eyes; he should’ve known the other teen would’ve been late. Paul leaned against the stone wall next to the (always open) cast-iron gates that marked the official entrance to the park and stuck his hands in his jacket pocket.

A few minutes later, Joret came walking up the block carrying a small shopping bag and a grin on his face that Paul could just barely make out in the limited morning light.

“There you are!” Joret called and waved, as if he’d been the first one at the gate the entire time. Paul chose not to comment on his friend’s lateness and instead questioned him about the bag.

“What’s in there?”

Joret smiled and shook it at him, “You’ll see.” Joret motioned with his head for Paul to follow him into the park, looking incredibly enthusiastic. The two walked side by side on the dark-colored pathway with a tiny inch between them.

True to the park’s name, there were azalea bushes everywhere, each genetically enhanced pink flower looking perfectly in place within their carefully trimmed bush. The walkways leading into the main park were closely lined with them, creating a quaint, colorful little entrance to an otherwise plain, green park.

As they reached the end of the walkway, Paul kept going toward the cleared field, but was surprised when Joret veered off toward the right, where the park’s outskirts were dense with gnarled trees that seemed to twist in together. Paul recalled how unintimidating they looked in the daylight, but in the dreary glow of early morning, the dark shapes were fit for a horror movie. Paul immediately stopped walking.

“Joret, we shouldn’t go in there. We’ll get lost for sure, and my parents don’t know that I’m out here.”

“Paul, trust me.”

Joret smiled reassuringly at his friend and started to turn around.

“Joret,” Paul tried to appeal to him again, but Joret stepped forward with a stern-like expression on his face,

“Trust me.” Joret reiterated, looking Paul directly in his eyes. Joret only broke eye contact when Paul gave in to his request and nodded. Joret smiled and began walking purposely toward the woods again.

Paul sighed and went after his friend.

Joret led him further and further into the dim forest, saying nothing about why they were going this far in, till Paul could no longer see the field behind them. His heart pounded nervously and his brain could only think of situations that ended badly: getting lost and starving to death, being eaten by some forgotten creature, tripping on a root and ending up in a coma, get trapped in a time loop, the list went on. Paul was rather envious of how easily Joret moved and how at peace he seemed to be here. The older teen had no trouble navigating the forest, moving swiftly between knobby roots, while Paul was stumbling on every other one.

Several times, Joret stopped to study certain trunks, but eventually kept moving. Paul remained silent and just followed closely; the older boy would talk when it was time.

Finally, Joret stopped in front of an average looking tree, its trunk was not too thick, not too thin, nor were its branches too high or too low. It was a tree, it was ordinary, there was nothing significant about it that Paul could see.

“It’s perfect.” Joret said and dropped the bag to the ground with a light crinkling noise, he turned around to face Paul menacingly, “Now take off your clothes.”

Paul’s jaw dropped and he jerked his body back, looking genuinely taken-aback, “Uh, what?”

Joret managed to keep his straight face for a second longer before dissolving in laughter, pleased at the shocked reaction his joke had gotten. Still grinning, Joret went forward and grabbed the jacket sleeve of a glaring Paul to physically position the other teen in front of the tree.

“Just stand with your back against it, okay?”

Paul rolled his eyes, but did what Joret asked anyway (which briefly made him wonder what he would’ve done had Joret’s first demand been serious).

“Just stay there.” Joret said to Paul before walking back to the bag.

Paul fervently hoped that Joret wasn’t going to do anything unnatural to him, there was only one alien custom he knew of that had to do with a tree. It was very violent, and involved rabies and giant ants. So, a few moments later, Paul concluded that being tied to a tree with green ribbon didn’t seem like that bad of a deal. In fact, it was a great alternative to rabies and giant ants.

Joret was standing in front of him with a smug expression; Paul stared blankly at Joret for the explanation he knew there would be (…he hoped there would be).

“Did you know,” Joret paused dramatically, “that in some tribes on the outer rim of Xanisis, tying someone to a tree is the equivalent of saying ‘I love you’?”

There was a small almost embarrassed silence between them, and despite Joret’s smiling, joking face, his eyes were looking at Paul with such intensity that it made the other boy blush. Paul looked down with a demure smile and laughed good-naturedly, trying to deflate the underlying tension of the scene as well as get rid of the butterflies in his stomach,

“Why do you look up all these bizarre alien customs?”

Joret blinked and shrugged, suddenly moving behind the tree to untie Paul. “It’s easier,” he muttered.

Paul stepped away from the tree and picked up the green ribbon that Joret had dropped to the ground when he was finished. He looked up at Joret curiously, “Easier than what?”

But Joret wouldn’t answer, and Paul didn’t really have the courage to say what he was thinking aloud.

\--

“Did you know that the humans on Earth usually touch lips with someone they’re attracted to?”

Paul lifted his eyebrow and said the (now ritualistic) line, “Oh really?”

“Yeah, it’s called kissing.”

“Sounds gross.”

\--

Paul lay on his side, staring at the tip of Joret’s nose and trying not to think of how, too soon, the sun would rise and he would have to say good-bye, for five long years. Five years where anything could happen, to him, to Joret. Maybe they’d forget about each other. Maybe Joret would fall in love with twelve or so aliens and live out his polygamist dream on Theresea 7 or whatever pro-poly planet he happened to land on. Maybe Paul would meet a nice Kentuckian and they’d live on a farm where they’d raise pigs and get fat on a diet of pork chops and applesauce.

He felt the need to break the silence, to make the situation the two men were in a bit more real, to find out exactly what they were going to do, if there was anything they should do. Because it was easy to pretend that it was a good dream, that ships did not have to sail, and they could just lay there encased in a (post-sex) fantasy without worrying about what feelings would be left behind.

“You’re going to be leaving soon.”

Joret nodded, his eyes closing drowsily. It was cold in their bedroom, colder than Joret had realized, not that their previous activity had given them time to take notice of room temperature. He answered Paul’s statement tonelessly, 

“Yeah.”

Paul bit his lip at Joret’s nonchalant answer. The room seemed to drop in temperature with every word the two lovers said, and Paul thought that that should only be typical in a parallel universe. He rolled over and chose to speak his next words to the ceiling. After all these years, there was still something hesitant in their relationship, a feeling that was in direct opposition to the one he felt about bringing up Joret’s mission tomorrow. It was the fear of finally acknowledging their devotion to each other and then having it break down into nothing. The fear that if they made this too real, it would cease to be and the only thing left would be stardust and two silly, adolescent boys playing around with alien customs.

‘And what a ridiculous thing to build a relationship on,’ Paul thought, ‘Extraterrestrial courting customs. Oh, we ate a peach together and he tied me to a tree! So what?’

The more Paul thought to himself, the more he was convinced that his feelings for Joret were a sham. He was deluding himself that they were anything more than two people who fell into bed with each other and managed to find the right hole in the dark...and that this was something Joret had known all along. 

Thankfully, what came out of Paul’s mouth was much simpler and more truthful.

“I’m going to miss you.”

It was said tentatively, he was just testing the water to see if it was okay to immerse himself. Or, he was sticking a fork in the middle of a cake to see if it was done; cooked, finished, burned. Paul hoped he was the anxious foot, partner carefully balancing on the edge, seeing if the water was as cold as it looked or if there would be a welcome surprise.

Joret glanced toward him for a split second and then closed his eyes again, and in that, Paul saw the oven door opening,

“No you’re not.”

Cooked, finished, burned.

Paul stuck his fork deeper into the cake, the cake with burned edges and a sickly smell.

‘Of course,’ Paul thought to the ceiling, ‘We—I based our relationship on obscure alien behavior, stupid, stupid, stupid!’ Even with all his rationalizations, Paul still felt like his whole body was empty except for this one huge knot in the middle of his stomach. 

“Joret—”

“You won’t miss me, because you’re coming with me.” Joret turned his head to face Paul and see the shocked expression he knew the other man would be wearing. Joret laughed, “Or didn’t I tell you?”

Knot untangled, Paul was filled with organs again. Angry organs. Angry organs that wanted to hurt something.

Paul sat up quickly and promptly punched Joret in the arm, a releasing of all the tensions that had been building for the infinite amount of time that was four minutes. In truth, Paul was more thankful than angry.

“You ass! I can’t believe you—oh, I hate you.”

Paul slammed himself back down on the bed with a big, relieved smile on his face. ‘Worrying over nothing, over thinking everything.’ 

Joret smiled softly, “You don’t hate me.”

“No, I guess I don’t.” Paul said lazily and crawled on top of Joret, straddling the older man’s waist and looking down on him with newly born affection. “So, how did you convince Captain Hard-Ass to let me come with you?”

Distracted by the movements of the man on top of him, and not concentrating very much on the next words coming out of his mouth, Joret smiled, “I told her I’d give her a videotape of us having sex.”

-

On a bright Monday morning, Lieutenant Commander Joret Conley boarded the terra-forming ship the USS Aurora with a black eye and busted lip with all the dignity of a man who had won the war. 

\--

“I think,” Joret said as he surveyed the landscape with Paul by his side, “That this is the best planet I’ve ever created.”

Paul raised his eyebrow, something sounded very wrong with that sentence. “The best planet you’ve ever created? I seem to recall you waking me up at all hours of the night to get my opinion on every single little detail you made. So as far as I’m concerned, half of this damn planet is mine.”

Joret shrugged.

“Well, fine, if you want to get technical with it,” Joret began pointing out different parts of the world he (and a sleep deprived Paul) had made, “Then that tree is mine (the one next to it is too) and that cluster of flowers is mine and that shiny rock is mine and that odd shaped cloud is mine (you can have the one that looks like a pig) and that—oh. Those are very nice lips you have; I suppose they belong to me too?”

Paul looked towards the sky, as if he was seriously considering his answer, “Hm, I suppose.”

Joret smiled, “’Hm, you suppose’? Well, my dear, dear friend, there’s only one thing I can say to this.”

Paul’s eyes were on the sunset and he kept silent waiting for the answer, but it never came. He turned questioningly to his partner. Joret was looking at him expectantly, Paul sighed when he realized that Joret was not going to finish his sentence unless he was explicitly asked to clarify.

Paul rolled his eyes, “What is the one thing you can say to this?”

Joret smiled, “And they lived happily ever after.”

Paul snorted and rolled his eyes at the display of sentimentality. Joret frowned and pushed Paul on the ground with one solid shove before returning to watch the sun set as his partner sputtered angrily on the grass.

“What was that for?!” Paul shouted up at him.

Joret glanced down to Paul, as if he hadn’t put him there and said very conversationally, with a slight leer, “Didn’t you know that on one of the moons of Justine, pushing someone to the ground is the equivalent of having, like, five orgasms?”

\--

…and so they did (orgasm five times and live happily ever after).

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, this is something I wrote when I was super into The Beatles fandom. I'm not so much anymore, but have decided to (slowly) relocate some of my works so they'll all be in the same place. This particular work was posted to livejournal in 2009 under a slightly different title, but same author name.


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